Over at Gawker, Tom Scocca published a very hard--and very fair--assessment of Kelly's role in the Iraq War. I hadn't read much of the work Scocca referenced, so I did myself a favor and looked up some of Kelly's columns in the days leading up to Iraq. What you find in these columns is the pit of all that, to this day, angers those who were against the war from the start. Kelly's columns are not just pro-war, they are ferociously pro-Bush, and gleefully contemptuous of liberals who thought otherwise.

It's the glee that burns. There's a kind of writer who gets his kicks writing bad reviews of music and books. You see that same spirit in Kelly's mocking of Paul Krugman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Janeane Garofalo, or in his attacks on the French by evoking the ghost of Pétain.

That glee turned Kelly into a thin writer who spurned nuance in favor of hyperbole. In the fall of 2002, for instance, Kelly wrote that Bush...

...presides over an administration that is unusually intelligent -- and also cunning -- unusually experienced, unusually disciplined and unusually bold.

He continued:

Democrats will howl...that the president is not competent, that his administration is not to be trusted, that Republican presidents and Republican policies are radical and dangerous and frightening and bad...

I suppose they will continue to believe this, and continue to say it, in voices growing ever more shrill and ever more loud, yet, oddly, ever more distant and faint.

The president wasn't competent. Iraq and then Katrina proved that. And the voices did not grow more "distant and faint."

Death does not bestow nobility.

But idiots like Jamie and AdamJames think it does and that they can pick out any dead corpse and trot it out to prove a point.

Sorry, stupids, it doesn't work that way.

Most important, for the deeply stupid, stop pretending to defend journalism by noting deaths when the deaths you include of are people who worked for RADIO this or RADIO that.

Those aren't news outlets. They're propaganda fronts -- part of THE VOICE OF AMERICA.

WASHINGTON, D.C. –U.S. Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and David Perdue, R-Ga., today
voted to protect the Second Amendment rights of American citizens by
halting an Obama administration rule that requires the Social Security
Administration to report the information of some
beneficiaries to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System
(NICS), essentially adding them to a list of those who are prohibited
from purchasing a gun.

“It
is essential to ensure that the Social Security Administration
recognizes and protects the fundamental nature of Americans’ rights
under the Second Amendment,”
said Isakson.
“I have long criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs for having a
similar process that fails to respect veterans’ due-process rights, and
I urge my colleagues
to overturn this blanket restriction that effectively bans persons
receiving disability benefits from purchasing firearms for no good
reason.”

“Our Constitution enshrines the freedoms we all enjoy as Americans,”
said Perdue.
“The Obama administration’s attempt to prohibit law-abiding Americans
from exercising their Second Amendment rights is a blatant overreach.
I’m glad Congress has taken
the common-sense step to undo this onerous rule and protect rights
guaranteed by the Constitution.”

After the rule was announced, numerous advocacy groups voiced opposition:

American Civil Liberties Union:
“There is no data to support a connection between the need
for a representative payee to manage one’s Social Security disability
benefits and a propensity toward gun violence. The rule further
demonstrates the damaging phenomenon of ‘spread,’ or the perception that
a disabled individual with one area of impairment
automatically has additional, negative and unrelated attributes. Here,
the rule automatically conflates one disability-related characteristic,
that is, difficulty managing money, with the inability to safely possess
a firearm.” (American
Civil Liberties Union letter to Congress, 02/01/2017)

National Council on Disability:
“NCD
is a nonpartisan, independent federal agency with no stated position
with respect to gun-ownership or gun-control other than our long-held
position that restrictions on gun possession
or ownership based on psychiatric or intellectual disability must be
based on a verifiable concern as to whether the individual poses a
heightened risk of danger to themselves or others if they are in
possession of a weapon. Additionally, it is critically
important that any restriction on gun possession or ownership on this
basis is imposed only after the individual has been afforded due process
and given an opportunity to respond to allegations that they are not
able to safely possess or own a firearm due
to his or her disability. NCD believes that SSA’s final rule falls far
short of meeting these criteria.” (National Council on Disability
letter to Congressional Leaders, 01/24/2017)

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.